maintenance of two churches where one would suffice for the worshipers
of both classes involves some additional expense, the expense may not be
greater than the resultant spiritual advantage.

But to close the doors of any church on any Christian is in so far to
make it an unchristian church. To go into the South to establish white
churches from which, whether by a formal law or by an unwritten but
self-enforcing edict, men are excluded because God made them black, is
to deny one of the fundamental tenets of Christ: All ye are brethren. It
is to introduce into a church already divided by sectarian strifes a new
division. It is to rend afresh the seamless robe. To say to any man
asking for Christian fellowship on the simple ground of faith in Christ,
"Stand back: for I am whiter than thou," is simply a new and
indefensible form of Pharisaism. The church exists to proclaim certain
truths, among which the brotherhood of man stands pre-eminent. It is
difficult to see with what consistency a Christian minister can preach
on the parable of the Good Samaritan if his church refuses to recognize
a Christian brother in one of another race because he belongs to another
race. There is no reason for an attempt to corral all men of all races
in one inclosure; but for any church, especially for a church of the
Puritans, to enter upon missionary work in the South, and initiate it by
refusing to admit to its fellowship a black man because he is black, is
to apostatize from the faith in order to get a chance to preach the
faith. To assert equality and brotherhood at the polls, to reaffirm it
in a public school system, to reassert it by courts of law in the hotel
and the railroad train, and then deny it in the church, would be indeed
a singular incongruity, and would make the Nation more Christian than
the church.

The principle, then, by which the color-line question is to be settled
is very simple, though its application may in some cases present some
difficulties. The whites and Negroes are not to be coerced or bribed
into uniting in one and the same church organizations. If they prefer to
worship and to work separately, they must be allowed so to do. This is
within their Christian liberty. But it is not within their Christian
liberty to refuse the fullest and most perfect Christian fellowship to
each other. The doors of every Christian church must stand wide open to
men of every race and color. The only reason of exclusion must be in